BioSecurity Protect Your Flock

Biosecurity is important because your dirt is different than my dirt. Find out what this means and why its important.

• Transcript

  Jennifer: 0:00

  Hi, and Welcome to Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Jennifer Bryant, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Carey Blackmon. And we're here to help you get all the information you need. To grow the healthiest, happiest, and best quality birds possible.

  0:16

  Mhm.

  Carey: 0:19

  Let's talk about a general overview of biosecurity Okay, so Generally what we're talking about with biosecurity for people who may be new to poultry is just another good word for it might be cross contamination. Think in your kitchen if you're dealing with raw chicken in your kitchen, you're not going to walk around touching all the doorknobs. It's the same thing. If you're dealing with a sick chicken, you don't want to walk around and feed and handle your good chickens or your new chickens or your baby chicks you want to be mindful of essentially cross contamination. That's a good analogy, don't you think? Yeah, so for me I don't let people come to my farm. And when you're dealing with poultry people, whether it be chicken or quail or whatever a lot of them want to go places and want to see stuff. And unless I know the person, they're not going to come to my place and look at my birds. I just, to me, it's not worth the risk. Cause I don't know what they have at their house. I don't know if they're birds, if they have sick birds and that's why they want more, I don't know what's going on. True. But it's more than that. It's just, it's like going to the feed store. It's, it could be some talking to somebody at Walmart checkout. You have to have your barn shoes. And they only stay at your barn. You don't want to wear your same sneakers to Walmart or Tractor Supply and then go into your barn. Especially the feed store. Because, there's no telling what you're going to pick up there. I was going to say, people that come to the feed store and don't have barn shoes, they've walked in that store and all through it with everything on their shoes. There's going to be different degrees of biosecurity. You don't let people come to your farm, but I do. But I show, and so I, I have an element of risk at shows also. And And so I just find a middle ground that makes me happy. It just works in general for my business. Now I don't allow people in the barn anymore. I used to do that. I used to do workshops and stuff. I don't do that anymore. But they can come to the farm and do their pickups and stuff. If somebody wanted to pull up in my driveway, I'd be okay with that. But, they want to come look at your pens and all that kind of stuff. And I'm just not comfortable with that. I know that when you show birds, the person that shows birds takes really good care of their animals. They are up to date with all the latest and greatest nutrition stuff and they're feeding supplements and vitamins and minerals to their birds. And their birds are in great health, so they probably have rock solid immune systems, but a lot of people don't do that. The person that wants the cheapest bag of food probably is not thinking or feeding minerals and vitamins and stuff like that to their birds. So you don't know what they're susceptible for. And if you go to the show and you really just people watch for just a minute, a lot of people wear their barn clothes in there, their muck boots in there. Not necessarily the exhibitors, but maybe people that just wanted to come see the chickens. Or they put their fingers in and try to touch the birds. So, you're still getting that, that lack of biosecurity, I guess would say. And of course, you've got the airflow, so anything airborne is flying around in there. Yeah. And you told me one time that often you will take birds to a show to show that are already sold. Yes. Yes. A lot of times that's how I don't, I come home without any birds. That's a good plan. Yeah. So I go in street clothes and I come home with nothing and we can stop and have dinner on the way home and don't have to worry about birds in the van or anything. So works out. That would work out pretty good. Yep, but if I do bring birds home, now I have outdoor pens on the side of my barn, and we don't have to go in there to feed and water them. We can do it all from the outside. And so put them in there and they stay in there for a couple of weeks and then we'll assess them after that. But on it, to be honest, I've never brought home a problem to other long term show people. And one person told me that one time he brought home lice. He was pretty sure he brought home lice from the show. But other than that, he's been showing for 15 or 16 years, and that was it. Just one time he brought home some lice. If that's all that happens in 15 or 16 years, I think we're doing pretty good. For me, I'm not really worried about the show. I feel confident that people that shows, even the spectators, the vast majority of them probably keep pretty decent birds. What really gets me is I see people go into these auctions and these sale barns and. I don't do that because that makes me really nervous and gives me a lot of anxiety about what's floating around the air and what's on the poo on the ground in those places. But I have seen pictures of some of the stuff online that people take. And the condition that they're, even their cages are in doesn't look like they're well taken care of. So I myself have never been to an auction for poultry and, but I have seen it, they'll do them live on Facebook or whatnot. There's a local one. And one time I had somebody coming up from Alabama, wanted to come get some quail from me. And he said, we're going to go to the auction and I'm going to come pick up from you afterwards. And I said, Nope, just buy whatever you need at the auction. I don't even need you at the front gate. And you're not coming any closer than that. I know a guy that flips birds. And he flat out told me that he cannot keep anything. He can't hatch anything out on his property. He has asked me to hatch birds for him and raise them up for a few weeks before he got them. Because anything young that comes on his property Within 24 hours of stepping on the ground, it dies. And he buys huge bottles of antibiotics to mix in with his waters. And I'm like, dude, you've obviously got a problem. You need to address that before you flip all these chickens, because you take in a thousand chickens. They touch the ground at your place, get sick. You send those chickens off somewhere else. They're going to get sick and that's how crap spreads. And he was like, I don't know how to fix it. So we've talked about some situations and some options to mitigate, but from what experts say, even if you put an atrocious amount of lime in the dirt, till it in, go over and plant grass. It's still going to be months before any disease is gone. And that's when no animals on it. Yeah. Cause well say Merrick's that is, is in the dander that they shed and my understanding is, that can be in the ground for a long time and mycoplasma the same way. Mites, mites will just hang out in the wood until, till something comes along that they need to latch on to. So there's always something there's always worms. There's always, the chance for blackhead if it's on your property. There's a lot of stuff out there. Just lurking and waiting for the opportune moment to come up. And if you bring in an immunocompromised bird, like this flipper that, you know those birds are stressed, they're being moved around by the bulk load and they're stressed out and when their immune systems are stressed, that's when they're going to get sick on sick ground. That's just a recipe really for disaster. So, but so now that we've talked about what could happen, let's talk about what you can do to mitigate the possibility of it happening. You can't ever control it a hundred percent, but you could mitigate it. And the first thing you should do is just not wear your street clothes out there. You've designated barn shoes or yard shoes. So for me, I've got a pair of, they call'em boat shoes. They're designed for like deep sea fishing, so they're non-slip. They come up above my ankles a little bit. They're made outta rubber. And anytime that pair of shoes let's say if I was going to go to somebody's barn and walk around and do that, I would take that pair of shoes, put them in my tub with a gallon of bleach and some water, and I would let them sit overnight. And with that, I know that anything that came off of my property after I scrubbed them and they sit in that bleach solution, I know that they're sanitized and I'll take them and I'll wear them. And then when I bring them back. They go straight in the house, straight into the bleach water, and they'll sit overnight, and I'll repeat the process. And if I do go to a farm, when I come home, I go straight in the house, take my clothes off, put on clean clothes after taking a shower and put the ones that I took off straight into the washing machine. That's how I protect myself. If I go to a show and I come home, I take those clothes off, I take a shower, I put on different set of clothes, my barn clothes. And then I'll go take 10 to my animals. Is that, do you think that would work? Is there something else I should be doing? No, I would say that is sufficient. I don't know what else you could possibly do there. I know of a breeder that requires three days of not exposure. To a bird before he'll let you on his property, which to a degree, is really just a way of saying, no, you can't come to the property because who can do that if you have birds? So yeah, if you can go to that extreme and it's practical for you, the safer your birds are going to be, but I still don't think a hundred percent. You can't because you go through all that trouble, but you can't control the sparrows flying over your property. And I can't roll the 2000 Canadian geese that live at the lake next to me, that fly over all the time. To be somewhat practical at the same time. And I just, I would rather enjoy my birds instead of sterilizing myself out of my enjoyment. I think that there's degrees, I think, as long as you're aware of what could happen, and then What you could do to prevent it and then make the decision for what works for you. But ignorance is not bliss in this subject matter. No, definitely not. Because if you go to an auction, even if you don't buy anything and you come home and you go out and sit with your goats and you play with your chickens and stuff, and then you're on Facebook two days later, wondering why in the world your animals are sick. Let's back up and retrace your steps for just a second, so, sometimes like I won't go to an auction and I don't want to talk to anybody that's just been to an auction and I don't even buy cows from auctions if I buy them off of people I know. So I just, I will say that my son buys a lot of cattle from auctions. They require the better auctions. And that's, he, there are some that he won't buy from, but the more reputable ones, they actually require vet testing. You gotta bring your, you gotta bring your cattle there. At least a day ahead of time and they have a vet to test every single one of them for a whole slew of stuff and you have to pay that whether your cow sells or not. Okay, and that's great and everything, but in the, it's not a hundred percent. The cows here for a second. So I know of some people that have Had still births and had complications and they got the cow back up and stitched her back up and sent her to auction. So you're not just buying potential disease. You are buying potential problems. And the same thing will go for goat and a sheep. I've seen those things happen also. And I've heard about those things. The chickens, same thing, people I know somebody who purposely doses her sick birds up on antibiotics. And once their eyes are clean, she sends them to auction. So you don't know what you're buying and here's the other thing. If you're going to the auction and you are just buying birds, you want to take home to eat. You don't know what you're getting. You can be buying the birds from that lady. I know that doses hers up on high doses, the antibiotics and going home. The whole point to me and raising your own chicken is to know what goes into your chicken and. You know everything There's no way I would eat a bird that I just bought from an auction that is just crazy to me You might as well eat, but we're gonna go down a rabbit hole I was gonna say I was going to say you may as well go to a bargain grocery store And buy a chicken. I wasn't gonna name any particular But I mean it is what it is. There's a lot of people That have started raising their own for a reason. It is what it is. It is. Let's see, what else can we do about biosecurity? You want to touch on AI at all since because it's rearing up right now? While we're at it, we can talk about AI. I know that's a very meh subject, and there's a lot of rabbit holes that you can go down. Um, a lot of people say it's not airborne. If you do research it's only through their liquid, their juices of some sort, their saliva or whatever, and their poo. And that is true, but somehow or another, it still makes its way into houses. Which tells me that even commercial places have biosecurity issues or else it should not happen, but it's stuff that we have to, you get, that's another thing when you're walking around in your chicken yard, be aware if all your chickens are in pens and you don't have anything free range. and you see some poo, probably shouldn't step in it. Yeah, that would be a good one. Here's a good example of me trying to do something cheap and fun for the chickens. Cheap for me, fun for the chickens. I collected leaves. one fall about three years ago from where people bagged them up on the side of the road, I would just drive around and picking them up. And then I would dump them in my chicken coops. And I didn't think anything about it. I had collected leaves on my own property for years, but out here we don't have a lot of trees. And so I thought I'll just collect them. And I put them in the chicken pens and for them to play in and, have some entertainment or whatever during the winter. I got lice and every one of those pens that I had put the leaves in, I got lice on those birds and ended up having to treat the pens and the birds. So you, and those came from the wild birds living in the trees who had lice on them and got on the birds from the leaves. Is what I think, because I didn't have it in any other pens. And I'm not going to test that in any kind of experiments or anything. I don't want to deal with that again. Is this another experiment coming up? No. That 2024 is experiments already set up. So I'm not doing lice. I don't want to deal with it. Biosecurity, it can whack you in the face when you're not expecting it. It never would have occurred to me that leaves would have been a problem. I can see that. Yeah. What are some other tips that somebody could do to try to maintain a clean I guess I think a clean environment would be the biggest thing, maybe. What would you suggest for somebody who's trying to be biosecure and, AI is becoming a big thing as we're seeing it in the news, trying to stay away from that as well. What would be something that people could do? If I had to choose the top thing to do would be have good nutrition on your birds. So they have the best immune system possible. But you don't want them to live in a bubble, either. They need to be on dirt, and they need to have fresh air, and they need to have sunshine. And then the second thing, I would do, would just be aware of my surroundings and watch AI follows the migratory patterns of waterfowl. So you can actually watch it coming up from South America and work its way up north. And it, Those patterns are pretty well set and you can look up online and see where those patterns are. And they usually follow waterways. They're going to follow like the East coast of the United States, because they need to stop for the night and rest and they're going to need water. Their waterfowl, the Mississippi river channel that way. And so you get a lot of Canadian geese that nest in Missouri and. Iowa anything along the Ohio river and then goes north. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the out west, but it should follow the coastline out there also. But so when you see it to start coming up and it seems that flock that's coming north right then is carrying it. Then that would be a good time to put your birds under cover until they go on by. We're not talking about years here. We're talking about weeks. So. There was a lot of outbreak in South Alabama several months back. And I've got some keep stalls in my barn. And I know that it's better for them to be outside and have the natural daylight and all that good stuff. But when you have. exhibition poultry, having them is more important. So I brought my breeders in my barn. And I did it a year and a half ago. It was real bad and they were, it was getting closer and closer here. They found some in Nashville. And I brought everybody in until it, it seemed to go away. And we're only talking about three weeks here, about forever. Now I think the people over in the UK now they've been battling it for several years at this point. Yeah. I want to say in a lot of the countries on that side of the world, now it's to the point where you're supposed to register your birds. period. So they can track stuff, which I have my own opinions over that, that we should not discuss on the show, but it's a bit extreme. I don't got no birds. No, I don't. Yeah. I just talk about them on the show. All so basically what I'm gathering is feed your birds a quality feed with all the nutrients and vitamins and all the good stuff that they need. Take good care of them. Keep their environment clean. Keep yourself clean when you go take care of them and don't bring in any outside anything. Now, if you, let's say you've got, you find a bird that's just perfect. And it's one that would compliment your flock perfectly. What do you do when you bring them home? You quarantine them at least 30 feet away from your nearest bird for 30 days. Yeah. And then you go from there. I saw where you posted the other day you were giving away some dog crates, the big ones. They're like, I want to say four feet by four feet or something like that. They're big. Yeah. Yeah. I have three of those and their sole purpose is to, I call them my little prisons. And I have, let's see, Koops and more I believe make some ones that, some waters that'll go on the outside, and they have the little cup that goes through. And I have those for all three of the ones that I have. And I also have feeders that will connect. I use like cups. That'll latch onto the wire. And I put them about a hundred feet away from my chicken yard downwind. So anything airborne won't blow into my chicken yard. And they're the last ones to get fed and watered. And, I call them my little prisons because I'm going to isolate you for 30 days. Even when I take, even when I take a bird to a show, when I bring them back, unfortunately, they're going to have to live. Out there by themselves. Yeah, mine stay, over, we call them the condos on the side of the barn, those pens. I don't personally buy birds. I got my starter flock and I have never brought birds in again. So that's not something I do, but when I sell birds. Especially to people who don't know they've never bought a quality bird before they don't know what they're looking for. If they're interested in a lesson I will stress the bird a little bit. You can cover their nostrils for 10 or 15 seconds and see if bubbles come up in their eyes. That can be indicative of mycoplasma. You want to feel their breastbone, make sure it's straight. And there's some meat there. You don't want a light feeling, thin feeling bird. You always check feather quality, lift up the feathers, look for lice, nits. or lice walking around. On my birds, you would be able to see them on the comb because, the white on the red comb. You get the tail feathers, you to look for mites you look at their legs for scaly leg mites you listen to them breathing. Are they wheezing? Are they sneezing? Do they seem lethargic? Don't buy a bird to take home and hospitalize, don't do it. If you know it's one, I would, I haven't done it in a while. The last one I did was Houdini and that is my Rhode Island Red. Him and um, his two ladies, the trio. I brought them home. I quarantined them. And I told my wife, I said, I'm not buying any more birds. She said, you're kidding. And I said, no, I'm serious. I didn't say anything about hatching. I have, cause I have those and I have my Bresse, my American Bresse. I have my Delaware's and I've got a couple others and now I have, I will say I've gotten rid of a lot, but. I haven't bought any new ones. And it works. So I'm going to tell you a story about a lady and she's a repeat buyer of mine. She buys from me quite a bit. I send her lots of eggs. She's up North, never met her in person. She bought, I used to have Marans and I sent her some hatching eggs and she hatched them out and she just was, she's just in love with the Marans. As far as I know, she still has those birds to this day. So she had quail, she had bobwhite, she had turkeys. She had just some regular old layer chickens running around in the yard. And one Saturday, they went to an auction and she fell in love with this cage of pigeons and just had to have these pigeons. And she brought them home. And about four days later, all of her birds started dying. She first lost her turkeys and then she started losing her chickens. And she was texting me just in a panic. She was losing all her birds and these turkeys were to be raised for sale for Thanksgiving dinner and she's losing them and she wanted to know, could she still harvest them and eat them. And what she had brought home was mycoplasma. And her birds had never been exposed to it. And it was just too much for them. And it killed them. And, but the mycoplasma is just a virus. It's not, you can't get it from the birds. So I told her just to go ahead and harvest the turkeys. And they were safe to consume. But she lost every bird on her property because of those pigeons. Luckily at the time, the Morans were still in a brooder, but mycoplasma lives in the ground and she ended up having to burn her coop is what she decided to do. And she rebuilt coops on the far side of her house away from there. Yeah. And she's just now getting eggs again. She started over with quail and she's just now starting to get eggs again. The person that was telling me about tilling the dirt and throwing lime, another thing that I forgot to mention earlier is they said you need to burn it. That's just, that's a lot. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just not worth it. If you want to keep sick animals by all means, do just shut us off right now and go do your thing. But if you want to keep good, healthy animals. Then, pay attention to what you're doing. Think about what you're doing. Yeah, that's true. Coming up in the next few weeks or so, we're going to do a series where we start talking a lot about poultry nutrition. I'm going to use that to lead into that. I have, we're going to have Jeff Mattocks with the Fertrell Company who authored the book Niche Poultry. We're going to take a dive into that book. We're going to go through it. We're going to look at some setup options, different nutritions. We'll have some sample feed rations that we'll be posting on our Facebook. And also I am in the process of taking a class called commercial poultry nutrition. So we will, we'll dive into that. And we'll talk a whole lot more about keeping your birds healthy and happy. I have my own guest online. I have one for crim legbars and silkies. Ooh, we're going to talk about silkies. We have to bring her on so I can make fun of her. I'm going to tell you my, our, we're both, we both know RIP Stalvey from the Poultry Keepers 360 podcast. Yeah, he is going to be so excited. When we start talking to the silky lady they're just one of his favorites. Are you being sarcastic? I'm being very sarcastic. But I will say this, he and I both agree that there is a, there is silkies do have a really good spot. They are a lot of people ask about incubators. Silkies make great incubators. I don't really know what else though. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.